Tag Archives: Announcement

Now that graduation has happened, I can take a break from academia for awhile, and you’ll start seeing more new content here (yay!). Also, it’s my pleasure to announce a new cross-posting partnership. As you may already know, this blog already shares a cross-posting partnership with the race & pop culture blog Racialicious. In addition, a selection of Beyond Victoriana‘s articles will also be featured on Xerposa, the newest steampunk news resource site. And what are they all about? Well, in their words–

Xerposa is the blog that gives steampunk fans what they need – a place that gathers fashion, art, literature, and the latest genre-appropriate costumes and gadgets all in one place. Our articles feature the newest up-and-coming movers and shakers in steampunk, as well as the latest in gear, clothing, games, bands, and electronics. Read More.

Like this:

Hurrah! Button Me Up co-owner Morgan Payne was featured in the international Japanese-English newspaper Mainichi Weekly for our Rising Phoenix fundraiser work. Click to read the article.

Over the past several months, if you had met me or my business partners at Button Me Up or any of Beyond Victoriana’s allies at any steampunk event, you probably already heard about the Rising Phoenix Fund for Shelterbox. (If not, read the announcement here.) Our goal in March 2011 was to raise $1000 dollars for Shelterbox by the end of Labor Day weekend, and I’m proud to announce that we have reached our goal.

As of today, we have raised $1037!

But what does that mean for the fundraiser?

We’re going to continue on.

Disasters don’t stop when a fundraiser ends, and considering the current tornado disasters in the southern and New England areas of the US recently, first-responder organizations like Shelterbox are important to help those in need immediately. Thus, they are also in constant need of support.

So Button Me Up and Beyond Victoriana have decided to raise our fundraising goal to $3000 by the end of Labor Day Weekend.

Click after the jump for more info about how you can help meet our goal.

This May is packed to bursting. I knew it’d be a whirlwind of acitivity coming in, I just never realized how jet-lagged I’d be along the way! Top that with some Major Life Changes at the moment, current fundraising excitement, and yeah, I’ll just hide away with my netbook and blog KTHXBAI.

Much gratitude goes out to the folks at Aetherfest in San Antonio, TX for their kindness and enthusiasm. Extra kudos go out to the con chairs Pablo Vazquez and Cameron Hare for their dedicated attentiveness that they showed to all of their guests and attendees, especially when Lucretia and I struggled with some last-minute travel issues at the con.

Also, much love goes out to my friends up north at the Canadian National Steampunk Exhibition . Jaymee gave our presentation Steampunk Around the World: Steampunk Beyond Victoriana its international debut at the convention, and reported to me that it was a smashing success.

So a big “Hurrah & Salutations!” to all our new followers (and old ones!) that we’ve met at these events.

But what does our touring mean for the blog? To highlight the explosion of conventions, both steam-friendly and steampunk, we’re going to run a short series and feature some guest reports from these events.

And also, in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month last year, I wrote about Asians in the Americas. This year, we’re focusing on Asian Identities, Crossing Boundaries, a series that will update every Tuesday this month starting May 10th. How do Asian nationals and the Asian-identified diaspora embrace their identity in a globalizing world? How does modernity affect changes in fashion, culture, art & society? Each piece in this series will present modern and historical examples of how the cliche “East Meets West” can get turned on its head and explored inside-out. And oh yeah, still be steampunky too.

And, to end, a brief note about my panel schedule for this weekend’s International Steampunk City, for those who want to stop by and say hello:

Not only that, but the lovely gents from BBC international will be joining us! They are filming a story about steampunk. So we hope to feature the variety that our community has to offer. We hope you’ll be able to join us!

Only one more week until TempleCon! I’m scrambling to get my panels ready and will be there with The Wandering Legion of the Thomas Tew. TempleCon has a special place in my heart, particularly because it was there that the co-chair Madame Ximon suggested that I turn Beyond Victoriana into a presentation panel. It was talking with her that planted the idea in my head to start speaking specifically about steampunk & social issues at conventions. And so, after a year touring the country speaking about these topics, it’s really great to come back to the place that inspired it all.

Maintaining this blog has been extremely busy for me, and it couldn’t have been the success it is without YOU: the readers and the contributors. At the beginning of 2010, what started off as a personal project has grown to become a community venture, and it wouldn’t have happened without the numerous volunteer writers, reporters, and photographers who have helped me out. I feel like a broken record of saying this all the time to people, but that’s because THIS is what multiculturalism means to me: it isn’t just one person standing on a soapbox spewing encyclopedic facts, but a community of people interested in sharing their intellectual and artistic knowledge and personal experiences. I recently read an interview with Maegan la Mala Ortiz, Managing Editor and Co-Publisher of Vivirlatino, who said something that had really struck a chord:

Diversity has become such a buzzword almost to the point of meaninglessness. Diversity is not about holding hands to cover up difference. It is about acknowledging how difference works, good and bad and how we can build across not through or over difference.

That has always been the mission behind Beyond Victoriana: we are not simply celebrating, but also debating, confronting, and discovering through critical listening and learning. Because to post up content without context is equal to empty hand-holding. We’re not talking about historical facts alone, but how these facts shouldn’t be separated from how they affect our lives today. And it’s about time we did more than hold hands, but raise them up. Together.

I’ve been working on major developments with the blog as of late, the first being the website’s new layout (if you’re reading this site via RSS feed, you might want to take a look at the shininess; yeah, I’m a bit proud of this revamped look. ^_^)

More exciting, though, is that Beyond Victoriana‘s content will take a dip into fiction. As a rule, I don’t accept fiction submissions to post on the site, but this is a very special case. In cooperation with Tachyon Publishing, Beyond Victoriana is hosting translated excerpts from the Brazilian anthology VAPORPUNK. You may have read Fabio Fernandes’ review of the anthology during Tor’s Steampunk Fortnight, but here is the only place on the internet where you’ll be able to read teasers in English from this anthology. Click on the nifty icon on the website sidebar to read more (or you can click on the cover below.)

So, even if you have steampunk stuff that may not be relevant to Beyond Victoriana, it could still be featured on Tor.com-Steampunk.

In other news, there have been interviews abound! NerdCaliber spoke with me during Another Anime Con back in October about the steampunk phenomenon along with members of The Wandering Legion, and I’ve been featured in Brooklyn Exposed about Brooklyn Indie Mart’s Steampunk Day. The podcast Salon Futura also recently came out with their steampunk episode. Jeff Vandermeer, Karin Lowachee, and Lavie Tidhar all discuss “Steampunk Without Empire” — and share thoughts about post-colonial steampunk (along with namedropping this site). I also recommend reading John McClarmont’s review/essay about Fire In The Stone, on Salon Futura, which also addresses the question of historical nostalgia and how it relates to today’s current culture.

If you’re stuck on the US East Coast, though, then I recommend you attend the Steampunk Industrial Revolution happening that same weekend in Nashua, New Hampshire. I deeply regret that I won’t be there to support my New England steampunk friends, but from what I’ve been hearing about this convention, I guarantee that it will change your life. So go and register NOW.

In April 2011, I’ll also be attending Anime Boston as staff. This is actually the only con where I’m not planning to do anything steampunk… unless they ask. Stay tuned.

Also, Steampunk World’s Fair has also been gracious enough to offer Jha and I a return to New Jersey in May 2011. So we’ll be premiering NEW panels there… more info about those to come.

What can we expect in the coming one? More diverse interviews, analysis, pictures, and articles of course!

Several major projects are in the works for Beyond Victoriana, which we hope to unveil later this fall. More importantly, though, here is what we’re looking for now:

That’s right– take a word from Uncle Sam Abe Lincoln and consider what you can contribute to make this blog the best thing ever. Are you a writer, performer, artist, cosplayer, academic, tinkerer? Do you have an opinion, a story, a book review or outfit you want to talk about? Do you go to conventions and like taking pictures or writing about them?

Then consider hosting your work here!

Beyond Victoriana has had an amazingly successful year because of the wide range of voices present on this site. And we want yours too.

We are looking for guest posters, regular contributors, and potential interviews. In particular, we are also looking for reporters to cover the array of upcoming conventions & events. Immediate help is needed for TeslaCon & SteamCon II coverage, but we are also interested in covering future cons throughout 2011.

People from all backgrounds are open for consideration. Previous journalism or blogging experience a plus. If you’re interested, please drop an email to attic [dot] hermit [at] gmail [dot] com.

And of course, a big THANK YOU goes out to everyone in the community who have stopped by, e-mailed, blogged, linked, or talked up Beyond Victoriana in the last twelve months. We’re one year–and 21,000+ hits– in and more ready than ever for Year Two.

About Beyond Victoriana

The Nutshell ExplanationBeyond Victoriana is the oldest-running blog about multicultural steampunk and retro-futurism--that is, steampunk outside of a Western-dominant, Eurocentric framework. Founded in 2009, Beyond Victoriana focuses on non-Western cultures, underrepresented minorities in Western histories (Asian / Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, First Nation, Hispanic, black / African & other marginalized identities), and the cultural intersection between the West and the non-West.